By George & Josh Bate
The writers of 2022’s underappreciated Hellraiser reboot; the producers of V/H/S, Terrifier, and Backrooms; and the director of Dance of the Dead team up for a decidedly more adult and more action-packed version of Hocus Pocus, a supernatural horror film that makes up for its lack of polish with a simultaneously cozy and unsettling autumnal atmosphere, a number of nasty kills, and a much-needed dose of ‘90s-esque witchcraft thrills.
Making its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Heretiks follows rebellious teenager Mabel (Ava Mae Seidensticker), her older sister Ada (Josie West) and her friend Wesley (Luke Spearman) over the course of one blood-soaked Halloween night. When Ada is marked for sacrifice by a coven of witches determined to bring about the apocalypse, the trio team up with a disillusioned witch to fend off dark magic, blood rituals, and manipulations as they try to survive the night.
Gregg Bishop’s film immediately earns easy points in our eyes due to the extent to which it is soaked in classic autumnal horror movie atmosphere. Crisp air, blowing dry leaves, muted amber lighting, houses adorned with pumpkins and skeletons, streets filled with trick or treaters, and a seemingly innocuous suburban setting made eerie by just how ordinary it all is give The Heretiks the chilling, yet intimate aesthetic of a Halloween movie, in turn making it a delightfully ambient watch this spooky season.
The barebones of the film’s narrative, meanwhile, borrow heavily from Hocus Pocus. Both films, in addition to being autumnally atmospheric, follow a coven of ill-intentioned witches as they pursue a trio of kids/adolescents across a sleepy suburban town on one fateful Halloween night. But The Heretiks diverges from Hocus Pocus by operating as a decidedly more adult horror outing.
While the film features a few good laughs, largely thanks to scene-stealing Luke Spearman as Wesley, Bishop’s film is a darker, more mature supernatural horror flick. Much of this darkness comes from the film’s proclivity for violence, of which there is plenty. A creative use of practical gore give way to a number of grotesque visuals and even some inventive body horror in the final act. This isn’t a bloodbath in the manner of Terrifier, although the violence is certainly vibrant and striking when it graces the screen.
Like Hocus Pocus, The Heretiks possesses a sense of urgency that heightens the stakes and thrills. Having innocent and vulnerable children as protagonists inherently makes horror movies that much more threatening and frightening, and Bishop takes full advantage of the youth at the center of his story. As the coven wants to capture Mabel to use her for a sacrificial ritual on Halloween night, there is both a gravity and immediacy to the proceedings. The antagonists are on a time-crunch and are willing to do anything to get what they want, while Mabel and her team need to stay alive until the celestial event passes and the ritual cannot be performed.
Urgency and atmosphere aside, The Heretiks can be a bit rough around the edges at times. Some of the acting feels rather stilted, the framing and staging of certain scenes give off the quality of a low-budget television show, and the costumes often look like they’ve been lifted from the shelves of a Spirit Halloween. While this lack of polish gives The Heretiks a degree of charm, it also deprives the film of a more cinematic quality and, instead, plays like an exciting, albeit unrefined, made-for-TV movie from the late ‘90s.
The Heretiks also errs in its miscalculation of the balance between horror and action. The film packs a surprising amount of the latter, which usually takes the form of a fusion of witch magic and hand-to-hand combat. One or two of these sequences would effectively inject the film with some energy, but they prove so numerous that Bishop’s film could be classified by some as a horror-action film. That would be fine if the action was particularly compelling or well-choreographed, but it is neither and, more egregiously, often comes in the place of more measured pacing that would allow the audience to bathe more lastingly in the spooky atmosphere.
VERDICT: 6/10
Making its world premiere at this year’s Fantastic Fest, The Heretiks is a decidedly more adult and more action-packed version of Hocus Pocus, following rebellious teenager Mabel, her older sister Ada, and her friend Wesley over the course of one blood-soaked Halloween night as they try to survive a coven of witches determined to bring about the apocalypse. The film earns easy points for its classic autumnal horror movie atmosphere, with crisp air, blowing dry leaves, muted amber lighting, pumpkins, skeletons, trick-or-treaters, and an eerie suburban setting that gives it a chilling yet intimate Halloween aesthetic. While the film borrows heavily from Hocus Pocus, it diverges through its darker, more mature supernatural horror, featuring plenty of violence, creative practical gore, grotesque visuals, and a burst of inventive body horror in the final act. The urgency of the witches’ sacrificial ritual heightens the stakes and thrills, while Luke Spearman provides some good laughs as Wesley with a scene-stealing performance. However, The Heretiks can be rough around the edges, with stilted acting, low-budget-looking framing and staging, and costumes that lack polish, giving it the quality of an exciting but unrefined made-for-TV movie from the late ‘90s. The film also miscalculates the balance between horror and action as it packs in too many unconvincing and poorly choreographed action sequences at the expense of the spooky atmosphere. Nonetheless, Gregg Bishop’s film bolsters a cozy autumnal setting, nasty kills, and ‘90s-esque witchcraft thrills that collectively make it a delightfully ambient watch this spooky season.